With a title like that, your bound to wonder, “Hey, speak for yourself, I’m happy on Flowlab as it is!” But this is nothing negative, just stuff @grazer should add to his amazing game creating engine. The Updates listed here are not demands, and will take a lot of time to do, and may not even be possible. But here goes nothing.
Duplicating levels, as when you need to make a copy of a huge and detailed Level it is impossible to do so. This would REALLY help.
Being able to have a flip option in the sprite editor, as god that would be useful. Seriously, that would save us all a lot of trouble as we could make an AI Sprite flip as an animation!
A “When you type this, ___ happens” node. This would revolutionise Flowlab while making an easy, non complex way of loading data, as this would save SO much time and make life easier.
The Minor Updates:
Gradient option in Level Cloud Select. This is a minor because It’s not that useful to me, and if you said you could not do this I would not be too upset. Its just a good Idea to add.
Better Resolution. Before you start getting angry, I love Flowlab and none of this is meant to be negative, Its just something that can be improved. Again, if you said no, I would not be too Upset
Ability to have level switch between clours over time. WAIT. Before you say we can already do this with code and sprites" Like I said before it would be cool and helpful to do and it would not bother me if Grazer said no.
And Finally… The BIGGEST UPDATE… SINCE THE BEGGING:
@Grazer. You created this amazing website, all by yourself. You have skill. Everyone can see that. You created a community. And now for the big step… A deal with certain companies most Indie Programmers make. The One to release as a CONSOLE Game. Specifically PS4. This is a big step with the Chances of actually happening very slim. But may be Possible. Indie computer game makers do those deal a lot, the additional codes and blueprints would need a lot of time and Space to do, and of course their would be a lot of Complex copyright background stuff to do, But this would come above all others I could never ask anything of you again if this happened. I know it probably won’t, but if it… Dream come true @grazer .
Grouping objects, shortcuts in game editor and sprite editor (Ctrl+z to go back). Origin block would be so useful you don’t even know it. Origin block is where you can select where emit/spawn/attach happens on something.
…especially Being able to have a flip option in the sprite editor, as god that would be useful. Seriously, that would save us all a lot of trouble as we could make an AI Sprite flip as an animation!
Hey @“The Kodex” - Thanks for all these feature requests, I always love to see them, even when they are duplicates, to help understand which ones are the most important to prioritize.
Some of these are definitely already planned, and some are new:
Duplicating levels - this one is not planned, but you aren’t the first one to request it, so maybe it’s worth adding to the list
Flip in sprite editor - the sprite editor is due for a major overhaul, it hasn’t been updated in a long time. Flip is definitely one of the glaring missing features that it’s going to get.
When you type this, ___ happens - I don’t understand this one, maybe describe in more detail what you envision here?
Level gradient backgrounds - I think this could be done really easily by making a gradient sprite and just stretching it?
What do you mean by better resolution? Again, thoughtful feature ideas are great - they don’t make me angry
Level colors over time - I’m not sure anyone has requested this before as far as I can remember. Is this something that lots of people would use?
Console games. This is interesting. So the biggest hurdle here is not actually technical. The major console manufacturers (Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo) all have very strict requirements about who can develop for their platforms.
They also tend to have strict requirements restricting the sharing of information or code, making it difficult to get info about the process. This also prevents me from just making an “export for Switch” or whatever button on the website, since that stuff cannot be made public.
So, the issue here is that you would have to get approved as a developer through the console folks, pay a hefty fee to get into the dev program and get access to a development console, and then be able to have access to try and test your game on a console.
@grazer you should also add a feature where if you go into settings you can load a previous version of your game then you can go back to compare if you want to keep the earlier version there is a button on settings that says save on it.
@grazer Thank You for taking this into consideration, as these would really help to improve flowlab. Just to clarify,
The When you type this, ___ happens is like when a text box or something shows up with a title, Lets say “Level 4 Codes” and when you type the right message, like “Snowy_mountains” it will do something, e.g transport to level 4. This can be done in scratch as well.
And maybe for console idea you could have a donations part where people can willing donate to however much money it costs to be a developer. When you gather enough money for it you can, it just depends on how much the community want it to happen.
Yeah I know what you mean, I would like a date soon, but grazer did put all the updates he was going to do in order so expect level duplication first to set them all off
@grazer Thank You for taking this into consideration, as these would really help to improve flowlab. Just to clarify,
The When you type this, ___ happens is like when a text box or something shows up with a title, Lets say “Level 4 Codes” and when you type “Cloning_Time” it will lead to something happening, like transporting you to level 4. Basically, when you type something it leads to something else happening.
Also you could set up a donation where flowlabers donate to the cause of having it able to convert to console, so it depends on how much we want it rather having you use a lot of your money.
Also I came up with more updates:
Layers in the Sprite Editor. This would make life a lot easier. Maybe try to make an editor like https://www.pixilart.com/
Priority is great, but it would be super useful in the UI as well, like as a loading screen should be above everything else but is not, because of no priority in UI
Allow commenting in actually Flowlab as well. You said not many people use this, probably because they don’t take notice. But if we could comment on games (Maybe on the right hand side) we could inform people.
The 1st and the 2nd are the most important the 3rd is just an Idea. Hope you like @grazer
Yes, I am aware you can use ‘save’ and ‘message’ to work around it, but that is what it is … a work around
With ‘save’ I don’t like that you have to store data on your device. Wouldn’t it also be faster without having to access the data external?
Data Lists … don’t get me started, sooo many new game options. Mazes, dungeons, Inventories, card & dice games … just think about it.
To be honest, this is the first Game Development Environment where I am not able to use those, it seems to be such a major essential.
